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After our remake of Road Fighter in 2003 we decided was time to remake another racing game. This time we chose for Konami's MSX1 classic F1-Spirit! In only three months of development time, the game had to be finished. When you read this, the competition has already ended. Out of 73 submitted entries, we finished at the 13th place. Of course you can read what the judges had to say about our remake.

Forums and support

If you have any problems, questions or suggestions about F-1 Spirit, feel free to join us at the Braingames forums, or even better, at the F-1 Spirit forum. The forum is the place where you can find the latest developments, send us your contributions, send us fanmail or for just a friendly chat. You're welcome to join us!

News

18-08-2008

We decided it was time to get active again (more or less) and do some work! Here's the new stuff:

New website

Added rain effect

All custom car parts are now redrawn

And some minor otherfixes

About F-1 Spirit

After participating in the Retro Remakes competition in 2003 with our Road Fighter remake (which finished 7th out of 83 entries), we decided to give the 2004 competition a shot as well. Apparently we like racing games a lot, so after some voting we chose to remake the Konami MSX1 classic F-1 Spirit.

After 3 months of hard work and barely making both the deadline and file size limit, our contribution to the competition was ready. When finally the judges reviewed all games and passed their judgements, we ended at the 13th place out of the in total 73 entries.

But... because we finished the remake in a hurry we're not fully satisfied with the current state of the remake. That's why we are still working on it (sometimes), adding more features like graphical effects, more and better music and graphics, and maybe even network play in the future. So... no, the project isn't entirely dead and finished yet! Nontheless the remake is fully playable already.

Game improvements

The remake has the following improvements over the original:

Improved graphics

Improved music

More realistic physics

Camera rotation

Camera zoom

Highscore table

Multiplayer up to 4 players on 1 computer with split screen

Nice graphical effects

Replay saving

On-line highscore tables

Screenshots

Here you can see some screenshots of the game in action. There's more information on the about page.

Download

The F-1 Spirit remake is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux computers.
We provide binary versions for both Windows and OSX, for Ubuntu/Debian you can download a .deb file. For Linux or other OSes you can find the source code for the game in the last download.

Releases

You can download the remake from our primary server or our mirror. File size is about 18MB. Also try the nightly SVN exports for the most current version.

How to play

F-1 Spirit is a racing game. You will race with many different types of cars. Everything starts with stock cars, moving up to rally cars and Formula 3. The main goal is to finish at first place with Formula 1, the king class of racing. There are 6 types of races:

Stock race

Rally

F3 race

F3000 race

Endurance race

F1 races (16 tracks)

Initially, you can only race in the stock, rally and F3 races. As you win races, you will accumulate points that will allow you to play new races. If you finish a race at first place you will receive 9 points, you get 8 points if you finish second, etc. If you finish 10th or later, you will not score any points.

There are 16 different tracks for F1 cars. As you win races, you will be able to play more tracks in the F1 car category. To complete the game, you have to win all of the 16 F1 tracks. There's a grand total of 21 tracks. The first races are the easiest: the cars are slow and the enemies do not drive very well. But as you classify for new tracks the difficulty will increase: F1 cars are insanely fast! You will need a great agility to win in F1 tracks. Even though they look impossible to control at first, with some practice you can master the Formula 1 cars and win races. And if that's not enough, you can always show off your skills in multi player mode.

During a race, you can bump into other cars and into the side boards and other obstacles. This will damage your car. In every track, there is a pit lane (labeled with the letters "PIT") where you can fuel up and repair your car.

Controls

These are the default controls of the game. They can be redefined in the options menu.

Key

Action

Info

Cursor up

Shift up

Manual transmission only

Cursor down

Shift down

Manual transmission only

Cursor left

Steer to the left

Cursor right

Steer to the right

Space

Accelerate

M

Brake

F-1

Pause

F10 or 9

Select graphics set

ESC

Back to previous screen

ALT+ENTER

Switch between full-screen and window mode

For Windows and Linux

Apple key+F

Switch between full-screen and window mode

Only for Mac OS X

F12

Quit

For Windows and Linux

Apple key+Q

Quit

Only for Mac OS X

Game tips

Here are some tips that will make you enjoy the game more:

The most important one: the brake is your best friend, especially in the F1 tracks!

Use the PIT STOPS if your car has a lot of damage. For instance your top speed will decrease if the engine is damaged. This will make you lose time in every lap.

When you are in the PIT STOP you can hold down the DOWN key to speed up car repairs. Fuel intake will be slower, though.

The fuel consumption is determined by the RPM meter (as in real cars). Your car only consumes fuel when you accelerate. Keep these two things in mind while you race to save fuel.

F1 tracks cannot be won at the first race unless you are an ACE driver. To win an F1 race, try to memorize each curve and play each race several times to know where where to brake and where to accelerate.

Online hiscores

Here you can see the hiscores of the best players of F-1 Spirit. Join the race and submit your own scores!